Leadership in the Modern PMO

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at andy.jordan@roffensian.com. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

If you read many of my PMO related articles, you’ll know I am very focused on the PMO as a business function. I don’t believe PMOs can deliver organizational value simply by delivering effective governance or focusing solely on projects. Rather, I believe they succeed by ensuring project execution is effective in the context of the organization as a whole—delivering the business success they were approved for in the first place.

There are a lot of ways that can be achieved, and success requires a combination of focus on the right areas, sharing of the right information and alignment of all the different roles. However, it also depends a lot on the PMO’s ability to guide and support—leadership.

I feel as though the type of leadership or soft skills required has changed a lot over the last few years, and they continue to evolve due to a number of different factors. However, I also feel as though this is an area that is underappreciated, not receiving the level of focus required. In this article, I want to look at the drivers of some of those changes, the implications and what the modern PMO must do to be successful.

The changing leadership environment
Let’s set aside the increasing automation within project management. While that is raising the importance of leadership and soft skills for all project-related roles, it’s not